


a host, of golden daffodils

by elizajane



Series: Welcoming Silences [64]
Category: Foyle's War, The Bletchley Circle
Genre: Children who conveniently go to bed relatively early, Divorce/Separation, F/F, First Kiss, First Time, Flowers, Lodgers to Lovers, Tea, Tea abandoned for a good cause
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-05-02 14:04:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14546322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane
Summary: Susan’s kiss had tasted of something new and wonderful, something Sam has somehow always known but long forgotten. Something secret, and safe, and right.This piece more or less stands on its own, but overlaps slightly with the end ofhere is the deepest secret nobody knowsand is its direct sequel. It takes place firmly within the Welcoming Silences 'verse.Content note: pregnancy loss (recent miscarriage).





	1. Sam

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to series co-author Crowgirl for the beta. All remaining infelicities are my own.

On the day Susan and the children return from Coventry, Sam wakes up well before the tinny rattle of her alarm clock. It is one of those rare mornings when she moves from sleep to wakefulness in the space of a breath; she hauls air into her lungs as if she’s a swimmer surfacing from too long beneath the waves. The house is quiet, the winter darkness still blanketing the world outside, and Sam couldn’t have said what makes her aware upon waking that it is morning -- just that it is.

She lies beneath her quilts for the space of a few breaths, feeling her chest rise and fall, rise and fall, as the clock on her bedside table ticks softly onward toward dawn. She licks her lips, tasting the sourness of sleep, and thinks about the kiss Susan had pressed to her cheek on New Year’s Day; that moment at the door while the cab to the station had waited, idling, at the curb. A kiss at once wholly innocent -- a kiss on the cheek, from a friend saying goodbye upon departure -- and, between Susan and Sam, wholly dangerous. An invitation to something _more_.

Sam has been thinking about how to respond to the invitation of that kiss since Susan’s lips had grazed the corner of her mouth: A question. Since Susan had pulled back, stepped toward the door, and Sam had swayed in the effort not to follow: An answer. She’d had just enough wits about her not to step forward into the all-too-public frame of the open front door, not to expose the intimacy that Susan so carefully protected. Instead, the conversation had been left unfinished. In the stillness of this predawn hour, Sam lets her eyes trace the cracks in the ceiling plaster as she breathes and thinks about all of the answers she wants to give. She can still feel the press of Susan’s lips at the corner of her mouth, the waxy taste of the lipstick Susan had applied for the journey to her parents’ house. Sam pushes her tongue against her bottom lip, imagining how it might feel to have Susan’s tongue there instead of her own. How it might feel to open her lips and invite Susan closer. With every breath Sam takes she grows more certain that _closer_ is exactly where she wants Susan to be.

Sam has kissed more than a few people -- more than a few _men_ , at least -- in her life. Adam being the most recent example. Though she hasn’t kissed Adam -- or even thought about kissing him -- since their separation. And for months before that their kisses had become perfunctory pecks on the cheek. The brush of his lips to her temple as she lay in the hospital ward. Nothing more. _Kind_ is the word that comes to mind when she thinks of Adam’s kisses. He had been so very _kind_ to her. In an absent-minded, often puzzled sort of way. As if she were a person he felt responsible for -- yet was baffled as to how he’d come to acquire her.

Now that Sam has room in her heart to be charitable, she feels she can concede Adam’s bafflement is … if not fair, at least understandable. She can no longer recall, really, how it was that either of them acquired the other. It had been in those heady days at the end of the war, when it seemed that everyone left alive was rushing to the altar. Three of the women she was billetting with at the time had become engaged within a fortnight; two others whose sweethearts were on their way home had started talking about dates and saving ration points for a reception. All around them _expectation_ was in the air: The course of life that war had interrupted should now be resumed. And for girls like Sam, that course had most certainly not included a continuation of the camaraderie and purpose of days spent living and working with other women. Instead -- in the newspapers and newsreels, in letters from parents and sweethearts, in shop windows and Sunday sermons, in the excited chatter of girlfriends and in the assessing eye of mothers -- the expectation was that Sam would, _should_ , want nothing more than to turn away from that life and get on with the work of wife- and motherhood.

Sam had felt alone in her fear that those were tasks for which she was dreadfully unsuitable and utterly unqualified.

Now that Sam is no longer trying to fit herself into Adam’s life she wonders now why she ever thought she could. Her only answer is that she had thought at the time, having liked him reasonably well and slept with him once, then twice, then a third time -- after which he’d proposed -- she had no other course of action. It had felt less like a decision than an inevitable destination. She had given up, and given in.

Susan’s kiss had tasted of none of those things: the bafflement, the resignation, the inevitability. There are no unspoken assumptions, no rules, no social pressures pushing them toward one another. There is nothing expected of them in response to the delicate web of feeling that they’ve spun between them since September. Susan’s kiss had tasted of something new and wonderful, something Sam has somehow always known but long forgotten. Something secret, and safe, and _right_ deep inside of herself. Something that she doesn't think she has words for. Something that she’d like to discover the words for.

* * *

Shortly before she left Adam, Sam had stopped going to church altogether. She’d been known in their parish as Mrs Wainwright and dutifully attended all of the WI meetings so she could feel she was doing her part. The women there, many of them her own age with babies in arms and a second, or third, on the way were warm and welcoming. They made Sam feel almost like she was a little girl again, playing under the tables while her mother and her mother’s friends gossiped over tea, or being taught to tie ribbons on the Christmas gifts for parish children.

She had tried, after losing the pregnancy, to return. She’d thought perhaps their kindness would help her feel less ... _wrong_ , in her own skin. Instead, they had only made her feel monstrous for the relief that eclipsed her sadness. For the relief that her body was  _hers_ alone once more. The pitying looks and soft words of condolence from every side had only served to remind her that this wasn’t how she was _supposed_ to feel. With every exchange of niceties, however kindly meant, they reminded her how badly she was performing as Adam’s wife -- as a wife at all.

Sundays became a weekly reminder of how much she didn’t belong. Until she couldn’t bear it any longer and stopped going altogether.

But she was a vicar’s daughter born and bred, and every Sunday morning when the church bells rang she would feel guilty for not pinning on her hat and walking out with Adam for the service. So when she had finally made the decision to leave, and moved into her little room at the Grays’, it had been a relief to see that the small C of E parish church stood along her walk from the tube station, across from a patch of grass that had once been the village green. No one would know her, here. Here she could be Miss Stewart, the vicar’s daughter; Miss Stewart, the secretary. She no longe felt vershadowed by her own incompetence every Sunday morning, and the services slowly became a welcome ritual once more.

So when the winter dawn finally breaks, Sam braces herself for the chilly run from bedroom to the bathroom down the hall, where she splashes her face with tepid water and brushes her teeth before returning to her room to dress for church. The upstairs hall feels long and empty with all of the other bedrooms closed; Sam shivers as she passes the door to Susan’s bedroom, brushing her fingers across the panels and doorknob, letting herself imagine -- daringly, breathlessly -- what it would be like to turn the knob and go inside, knowing she would be welcomed in. Her heart speeds up, just a little, at the thought and she feels her nipples tighten beneath her robe in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.

The morning service is sparsely attended, though it is the Sunday of Epiphany. Sam sits toward the back at the left, next to elderly Mrs Simms whose arthritic hands make holding the hymnal difficult. Sam holds the book for them both, although she suspects that Mrs Simms has all the verses of every hymn memorised anyway. She’s always a bit flat, but sings with an enthusiasm that makes Sam feel less self-conscious of her own wobbly mezzo soprano.

“Thank you, dear,” Mrs Simms leans over to whisper as they settle back into the pews for the sermon. The minister, of Sam’s father’s generation, has chosen Isaiah 60:5 for his Epiphany message: _Then thou shalt see, and flow together, and thine heart shall fear, and be enlarged._ Sam doubts the kindly Reverend Stephens would see the verse as applicable to choices Sam has before her, but the words are comforting nonetheless. She is afraid, yes, but also exhilarated as she has not felt since ... well, since the war. When she felt she was doing something, being something of her own person -- not just existing in the shadow of other people’s expectations.

It’s a cold, clear day; the snow that had fallen on the final days of the old year remains on the ground, and forms dirty puddles at the edge of the pavement. Sam thanks the vicar for the service and steps out into the sunlight, pulling the collars of her coat and tucking in the ends of her muffler. There are a group of children playing a game of snowballs in the churchyard and Sam narrowly misses being hit in the shoulder by an errant fistfull of snow. She remembers how she longed to participate in such games as a child and how, as the minister's daughter, she was never allowed. She wonders if Claire and Sam have ever built a snowman, and if the winter will provide them with enough snow that she might show them how.

Most of the shops on the high street are closed, but Sam’s attention is caught two doors down from the chemist where the florist has a display overflowing with hot-house lilies and irises and daffodils in the front window. She pauses. The bright yellow of the daffodils look like the warmth of the winter sun gathered together for a bouquet. She's never purchased flowers for a sweetheart, before, although Adam once bought her a half-dozen roses on their anniversary. She wonders if Susan likes flowers; if she does, she is not in the habit of buying them herself -- the tables have been bare of flower arrangements since Sam moved in.

Sam steps into the shop with the tinkle of a bell. The shop is empty save the proprietor -- a man perhaps a bit older than Sam herself, the visible scars on the side of his face silent testimony to his wartime service. He looks up from the counter where he’s preparing small bundles of cut flowers wrapped up in paper and twine.

“May I help you, miss?”

“It’s just -- the daffodils in the window,” Sam points. “Are they for sale?”

They are, and he wraps two dozen in brown paper as Sam pulls out her pocketbook.

“Dinner party?” The man asks, snipping the twine and reaching for his pad and pencil to calculate the price.

“I’m sorry?” Sam asks, and then “Oh, no, I just -- I was walking by after church, you see, and I’ve a -- I’ve a friend coming home from Coventry today. I think flowers are such a nice welcome, after one has been away on a trip, don’t you?”

* * *

Sam realizes, upon arriving back at the house, that she has no notion of where Susan might keep the vases -- or even if she has any. After hanging up her coat and hat she lays the flowers on the drainboard and begins opening cupboards. Her mother, as best Sam could recall, had kept her vases under the kitchen sink when not in use. But none are to be found under Susan’s kitchen sink, nor in the cupboard over the range, or in the pantry. She finally finds three dusty vases behind the broom and mop in the boot cupboard under the stairs. She washes them at the sink and fills them with enough water to sink the cut stems of the bright yellow daffodils.

One vase for the kitchen table, where they ate most nights with the children, one on the half-moon table in the front parlor window. Then, feeling daring, Sam climbs the stairs and turns right, down the hall to the master bedroom.

She hesitates with her free hand on the knob of the door, then turns her wrist and lets herself in. She’s seen the room in glimpses before, passing to and from the toilet, but never had occasion to enter. It’s a larger room than her own or the children’s, westward facing with the afternoon sun filtering through the drapes. The blackout curtains that had, presumably, hung across the windows during the war had been replaced by drapes of a deep wine red. The quilt on the neatly-made bed looks like a family heirloom: the pattern of interlocking rings faded, worn nearly through in places. The room shows faint signs of a masculine presence, but not a recent one. Timothy has been out of the country since June and his bedside table is empty but for a neat stack of three books, a lamp, and a sleek, modern looking alarm clock. A spare shaving kit on one of the two dressing tables, a pair of brown loafers tucked beneath.

Susan’s side of the room -- and there is very much a Susan’s side -- feels warmer at the edges. There is a small carpet with a faded oriental pattern in reds and blues. A pair of slippers, and Susan’s green dressing gown tossed across the quilt as if she had taken it off in order to dress for the day. Sam has shared intimate space with many women, and never before can she recall the sight of a dressing gown leaving her mouth dry with desire. She licks her lips and looks around for a suitable place to leave the vase.

The small vanity to the left of the bedroom doo wins, in the end, and Sam makes a space by moving a hair brush and bowl of hairpins to one side. She fusses with the vase to ensure the flowers reflect in the mirror, filling the room with vibrant color.

“There,” she says to herself in satisfaction, standing back to admire her work.

There’s a curling photograph of Timothy and the children propped against the mirror. A year or two old judging by the size of the children; Claire looks closer to three than five and little Sam is practically a babe in arms. Sam picks up the snapshot, holding it gingerly by the white deckled edge, and studies Timothy’s face. He looks kindly enough, though slightly awkward with the baby on his knee. As if unused to holding something so small. His knees are knobby, Sam thinks uncharitably. Then feels ashamed for being even silently critical of a man whose wife she wants to ...well, would it be considered adultery? Sam is fairly sure it would. She shivers and puts the photo back.

Susan rarely speaks of Timothy and, when she does it is usually in reference to “the children's father,” rather than Timothy as a man or as her husband. She seems to consider the marriage over. There has been no discussion of his return from Beirut and Sam wonders if it was an agreement between them, whether he already had someone else he looked at the way Susan looks at her.

Beside the photograph is a folded piece of paper that looks vaguely familiar and Sam picks it up without thinking and opens it. It’s a note, in Sam’s own handwriting, from back in the autumn: “Gone to Hastings, back Tuesday.” An errand for Mr Foyle, she remembers, and wonders why Susan had kept the note at all. Perhaps it had become a bookmark. She refolds the paper and sets it back on the vanity. She feels a little thrill of pleasure at the knowledge that Susan had kept something Sam had written on, here, in this intimate space.

On her way back down to the kitchen, Sam glaces at the clock in the front hall; at any moment it will be striking half-two. The train from Coventry will be arriving at Euston Station a few minutes after three (she has only checked the printed schedule on the hall table once daily since Susan and the children departed). She sets on the kettle for tea with the intention of settling to read the book that Paul had given her for Christmas -- a new mystery called _A Dinner for None_ \-- but when she carries her cup and saucer into the sitting room, and sits down with book and tea before the radiator, she finds she cannot concentrate.

The house is too ... uninhabited. While sometimes the constant commotion of small children during the past few months has made her retreat to her bedroom, without them the house feels empty. Susan doesn't even have a cat. _Not quite the same as human company_ , Paul had said on Friday morning when she'd gone round to Mr Foyle's London flat with the packet of reports from Mr Valentine. Still, a cat would be nice. Or perhaps a dog. Sam's uncle Martin had had a pair of Irish Setters when Sam was small; she remembers them as towering above her. Fleet and Swift, he'd named them. There's a snapshot in a family photo album, somewhere in her parents' attic no doubt, with herself as a plump, befrocked infant seated atop Fleet, tiny fingers buried in the russet fur and a gummy smile for whomever was behind the camera.

Claire and small Sam are energetic children, and Sam can easily see them enjoying a four-legged playmate. Perhaps she and Susan could see about acquiring a dog ... she sighs, closing the book on a page she's read at least three times without retaining a single word. The game she and Paul have, of seeing which of them can work out the culprit the fewest pages into a mystery, will be Paul’s win hands down this round if she can't even keep the characters straight. Setting the book aside, she gets up to turn on the wireless, then turn it off again when the murmur of voices -- so strongly associated with the dreadful news of wartime -- makes her palms sweat.

“I’ll bake something,” she says to herself. “Right, then.” And takes herself off into the kitchen once more.

Sam has always thought herself hopeless when it comes to the domestic duties that fall to a wife: she's hasty in cleaning, unreliable with a needle, too disorganized to host a dinner party, and never lived up to her mother's standards in the kitchen. But since joining the Gray household, the kitchen has become a place she looks forward to spending time. It began with offers to set the table or peel the potatoes, and had turned -- accidentally at first, then with mutual intent -- into a pleasurable activity shared with Susan that Sam missed when her irregular hours with Mr Foyle kept her through suppertime.

Susan kept her small collection of recipe books in a corner cupboard next to the pantry -- several from a grandmother, whose recipes were not always adaptable to wartime kitchens, and others of more recent vintage. Sam flips through two before she finds the recipe for Anzac biscuits she had half-remembered and begins assembling ingredients.

As Sam measures and stirs, then pauses to chop some dried apples she found in the pantry -- a bit of festive holiday flavor -- she thinks about Gracie. Gracie, the girl who lived two doors down from the vicarage in Lyminster. Gracie had been a year older than Sam, and -- as Sam’s mother remarked, frequently and coldly, was allowed to “run wild,” with her blonde curls cropped short, her knees always scraped and her shins often bruised. Gracie had two older brothers and her parents seemed unconcerned with differentiating their offspring by gender; Gracie had been allowed -- thrillingly, to the young clergyman's daughter -- to climb trees and play Robin Hood. Gracie was an _adventure_.

Susan also feels like an adventure. As if just being near her makes life more exciting, as if life with Susan could never be boring. When Sam was married to Adam she had thought, in her bleakest moments, as if the world were being slowly leached of possibility. It had seemed, at the time, an ungrateful -- even _sinful_ \-- thing to dream of the war years. But she couldn’t help it. She would catch herself longing, guiltily, for a time when she woke in the morning alive with the potential of the day ahead. When the work she did with Paul and Mr Foyle had been exhilarating and meaningful. When she caught, out of the corner of her eye, the barest flicker of Paul’s fingers against Mr Foyle’s wrist or watched Mr Foyle, very gently,  _not_ help Paul up the steps to their front door.

Those moments had made the world expand, somehow, to encompass many possibilities for joy. For living a worthwhile sort of life.

Being Mrs Wainwright had, in turn, foreclosed them.

Sam pulls the final tray of biscuits out of the oven as the clock in the front parlor chimes three. The train will arrive at Euston at any moment, and then it will only be a matter of Susan securing a cab before she and the children are on the final leg of the journey home.

Doubt creeps as Sam slides the biscuits off to cool on a sheet of brown paper. Perhaps she’s let herself get carried away, treating this kitchen like her own. Perhaps Susan would prefer to arrive home to an empty house rather than a lodger who’s made free with the rationed baking supplies in the pantry. Perhaps she should have found an excuse to be out for the afternoon, so that --

\-- the sound of a motor comes down the quiet Sunday street, and there's the sound of a car door shut firmly, then another. Sam wipes her hands on a towel and goes out into the hall; she's at the door in time to hear Susan's and the children's voices coming up the front walk, and has the door open to greet them before her nerves fails her.

“I’ve warm milk and biscuits!” she says, with a smile, to Claire and Sam as they tumble in with the cold. "For children who wash their hands!" She calls after them, in vain, as Claire lets out a whoop and drags Sam down the hall toward the kitchen without even stopping to take off her coat and shoes. As they disappear around the corner, following the smell of the biscuits, Sam turns back to find Susan just stepping over the threshold.

If someone -- Mrs Simms at the church, or the florist from whom she had bought the daffodils -- had asked Sam that morning whether Susan’s brief journey to Coventry had left Sam with the ache of absence in her chest, she would have denied it. She had been conscious of missing Susan, yes, and of the way the house seemed empty without the constant chatter and activity Claire and Sam generated as a by-product of being children. But until Susan steps back into the house on a draft of January air -- her cheeks pink from the cold, hat slightly askew, knot of hair beneath it disarranged from the train journey, lips turned up in a reserved-yet-unmistakable smile -- Sam had not been conscious of the way Susan’s absence left her chest constricted. Now she can breathe again, and she nearly gasps with relief.

She feels herself sway toward Susan, a need for touch she had not known was so close beneath the surface. She covers the movement by reaching for the open door behind Susan’s right shoulder, pushing it shut against the winter chill.

“Oh. How I’ve missed you,” Susan says, softly, as the motion of reaching for the door brings Sam near to brushing up against the lapels of her winter coat. Sam thinks she has never been so conscious of _not_ brushing up against another woman’s bosom. Susan drops the cases on the hall floor with a soft _thump_ , turning toward Sam as she speaks and, oh, Sam should take a step back to put some space between them. She knows she should. She can hear the children arguing in the kitchen, and if she doesn't appear soon to assist there will likely be broken dishes and spilled milk -- both of which they can ill afford.

But she doesn’t step back. Instead, she leans forward until Susan steps back -- but not without putting her hands up to Sam’s waist and pulling Sam with her.

“Welcome home,” Sam whispers, her lips just grazing Susan’s as she lets herself crowd Susan up against the wall beside the door. Susan falls back, willingly, lifting a still-gloved hand to cup the back of Sam’s neck and pull Sam in for a proper kiss. There’s no mistaking this kiss for a friendly peck on the cheek. Susan's lips are slightly dry from the cold and taste of the lipstick she applied that morning in Coventry. Sam lets the last syllable of _home_ open her lips against Susan’s and runs a bold tongue along the curve of Susans bottom lip. She feels Susan smile into that kiss. “ _Mmm_ , how I’ve missed you,” Susan murmurs into her mouth, hands smoothing down Sam’s back so that their bodies come together: breasts, belly, thighs. And then they’re kissing, deep and fierce, in a way Sam hasn’t kissed in years. In a way she’s dreamt of kissing Susan for days. In a way that feels r _ight_ in a way few kisses ever have.

 _I’ve missed you_ say Susan’s fingers digging into Sam’s hips. _Welcome home_ says Sam’s palms somehow pressed between them against Susan’s breasts. This is madness. At any moment one of the children could come running back into the hall. This is not how friends say hello. Sam drags her mouth, with a reluctant groan, from Susan’s mouth and drops her forehead to Susan’s shoulder. They’re both panting.

They don’t move. Sam doesn’t ever want to move again. A simple embrace can, surely, be explained away if either of the children happens to see.

Susan’s still-gloved hands slide beneath Sam's cardigan and settle at the small of her back, keeping Sam close, belly to belly, palms warm even through layers of cloth. Sam feels Susan's pulse fluttering where her forehead is pressed against the skin of Susan’s neck, is conscious of the way her own blood rushes in her ears. She squeezes her eyes shut against the prick of unanticipated tears. It’s such a relief to be held. Susan smells the winter wind and the stale smoke of the cab, the grit of the train station, and the echo of scent dabbed on that morning. Susan turns her face and presses soft, discrete kisses at the base of Sam’s earlobe.

_I’ve missed you._

_Welcome home._

After what had feels like long minutes of inexpressible contentment -- likely only a handful of seconds -- Susan exhales against her cheek. “I should see to Sam and Claire before…”

“Yes. Of course, I --” Sam pulls herself back with effort, hands going up to tuck her ever-unruly curls behind her ears. The places where Susan kissed her feel hot to the touch, and her cheeks burn. Susan pulls off her gloves, considering Sam with a thoughtful expression. Sam can't help but notice that Susan's cheeks are also flushed, her eyes warm as she takes in Sam's flushed face and smiles.

“This evening...?” Susan says, a slightly tentative note in her voice. “After the children are...?”

“Yes,” Sam had agrees, with a flood of relief that leaves her knees feeling weak. They had _later_. “Of course. I--”

Susan smoothes a warm, bare hand down the line of Sam’s jaw, running her thumb over Sam’s bottom lip before pushing herself away from the wall to fumble with the buttons on her coat. “Good.”

Sam steps back, then turns toward the kitchen to put on the kettle for tea as Susan hangs up her coat and steps out of her shoes. With the promise of _later_ she finds she is looking forward without impatience -- without _too much_ impatience, at least -- to the hours between now and the children’s bedtime. She wants to sit at the kitchen table, wants little Sam to clamber into her lap, wants to hear Claire’s wandering stories about the people and places of Coventry, wants to pour tea and pass a cup to Susan with a lingering caress. She wants to sit and marvel at the way Susan and the children act as if she’s been sharing this kitchen, this family, for years already.

She wants to sit and grow accustomed to the possibility of a new, and brilliant, future.


	2. Susan

Susan puts out a finger to trace the delicate edge of a daffodil petal, the movement causing bright orange pollen to shake loose from the stamens and fall to the varnished oak of the vanity below. She had noticed the flowers immediately when, after tea and biscuits, she had carried the cases upstairs to unpack. In another year or two, perhaps, Claire will be old enough to keep her own things in order -- but for now, the work falls to Susan.

The daffodils smell of spring, and of Samantha. Susan would not have said, until now, that Sam smelled of flowers, but now she thinks daffodils are the only flower she could possibly smell of: spring and sunlight and joy.

The flowers mean Sam has been in this room, in Susan's bedroom, and Susan shivers at the intimacy of it, the ghost of Sam standing in this same air. She's never liked this room, particularly -- had initially preferred the room that now belongs to Sam, overlooking the dogwood tree in the tiny back garden, but Timothy had insisted. It was the largest of the three bedrooms, after all, and he had pointed out that it would be foolish -- _foolish_ \-- to turn it into the nursery. _They'll be away at school before long._ Yet another assumption of his about their family life that she had lacked energy, at the time, to refute.

The presence of the daffodils makes Susan feel at once as if the room -- like Susan herself -- might begin, someday, breathe again. And also as if she wants to scrub the room immediately of any trace of Timothy's past occupation. She goes over to his dressing table and yanks open one of the drawers, sweeping his shaving kit and cufflinks into the drawer with a bone-deep satisfaction at the sound of the cufflinks falling with no real care. She kicks his shoes under the bed, pauses, and then digs under to retrieve them so she can shove them into the back of his wardrobe. Perhaps she’ll box the entire contents up someday soon and consign it to a corner of their cellar, behind the dusty foot locker he’d dragged back from North Africa at the end of the war.

“There,” she says, with decision, to herself. “There.” To her mother, to her children, to Sam. “There. That’s done.” She can’t see the way clearly, yet, but Timothy won’t spend another night in this room, certainly not with her in it.

She wraps her arms around herself, rubbing her palms up and down her arms as if she needs to scrub herself, as well as the room, clean of Timothy’s past occupation. The warmth of her own hands through the fabric of her blouse and sweater makes her remember the heat of Sam's body up against her own, the welcome shock of it. She closes her eyes and moves her hands again, more slowly, up and down, feeling the scent of the daffodils as if scent were something tangible, a caress, easing across her skin and wiping away the traces of previous, long-unwelcome touch.

She smooths her palms down the front of her body: the curve of breast, and belly, the dip of thigh, the triangle of warmth where the wool of her skirt pulls tight over her slip. She’s conscious for the first time in months -- years, even -- of her body desiring and being desired.

And yet, with the absurd mundanity of life, the suitcases must still be unpacked and the children will be hungry for supper and then she will need to put them to bed. Through the open door, Susan can hear the children's voices, and Sam's, as they put a puzzle together in the sitting room. The clock strikes half five. She wipes her hands over her face and shakes her head, taking a deep breath of daffodil-scented air -- green, and fresh -- to ground herself.

“Right,” she says. “One thing at a time.”

* * *

“Can I be of help?”

Susan glances over her shoulder, from the sink where she’s paring potatoes to the doorway where Sam is standing with her hands in the pockets of her misshapen jumper.

“Do you know,” Susan says before she thinks. “The children’s father never asked that question. There’s a tin of peas in the pantry, if you’d fetch it, and an onion, too.”

“Ah, the jig is up,” Sam murmurs. “You only keep me around to fetch and carry.”

“You do it so well, though.” Is this what flirting feels like? Susan can’t remember the last time it had been the easy. Perhaps with Millie, once. A long time ago.

Susan turns back to the sink, enjoying the sound of Sam rummaging in the pantry, then in the drawer beside the hob for the tin opener. It’s companionable, with an added frisson of something new. Something that’s been building between them since Sam first walked into Jean and Hilda’s sitting room -- was it only four months ago? Arriving home this afternoon to warmth and light and the smell of biscuits hot out of the oven, stepping over the threshold and into Sam’s arms had felt like a return to more than this house she’s lived in these past three years. It had felt like a return to herself.

“Claire and Sam enjoyed visiting their grandparents,” Sam offers cautiously, her words punctuated by sound of the tin opener. Her voice is pitched halfway between a statement and a question. The children had been full of stories over tea and biscuits, but Sam must have seen the weariness in Susan’s face, the permanent lines of resignation that settle in after more than a few hours in her mother’s company.

“My parents were very keen to have grandchildren,” Susan says. “They spoil Claire and Sammie awfully when we go to visit and as a result they'll be overtired and fractious for at least a fortnight.”

“Grandparents are like that,” Sam says at Susan’s elbow, reaching across in front of Susan to set the tin of opened peas next to the hob. It’s unmistakably a deliberate invasion of Susan’s workspace; Sam could just as easily stepped around Susan, or set the tin aside for later use. Instead, she’s right there at Susan’s side, her forearm brushing Susan’s breasts as she withdraws. Susan sways into the touch.

“We’d visit my mum’s parents for two weeks every summer,” Sam continues, “and I always ate myself sick on gooseberries.”

“My grandmother made an excellent plum tart,” Susan says, suddenly remembering. “I wonder if my mother kept the recipe. She never was one for cooking.” Like mother, like daughter she supposes. Her mother had been indifferent to the day-to-day running of the household, which she left the servants; there had always been servants. For her mother, marriage had brought with it enough money for staff; the freedom to pursue her architectural projects. Susan thinks this is part of why her mother has never understood how desperate Susan had become in her marriage to Timothy: when her mother tired of children she had simply sent them to the nursery. Timothy’s salary did not pay enough -- and even if it did, Susan does not think she could go through with it: exiling her little ones to the care of a nurse. She remembers too vividly how she had hungered for her own mother’s attention as a child.

Sam is peeling the onion. “It’s been ages since I had a fresh plum,” she says with a sigh. “I don’t think I even properly remember what they taste like.”

“They taste of summer,” Susan says. _Like you._

“Perhaps next summer we can find some plums and try to recreate it,” Sam says. “We would have to run multiple tests, of course. All very scientific. Possibly bring in two young consultants.” Susan can hear the smile, even before she glances to the right and sees it, Sam’s dimpled cheek, a blush of pink across her cheekbone.

“ ‘The Mystery of the Missing Plum Tart’?”Susan tries (and fails) not feel it means something irrevocable that Sam is using _we_ and _next summer_ in the same sentence.

“Well, it wouldn’t be missing, exactly, if what they’ve done is eaten it,” Sam points out, carrying the board with the chopped onion over to the pot and scraping it in to join the potatoes and peas and the last of the smoked haddock. “Though I suppose it’s all in the perspective.”

Susan laughs; it feels good to laugh at something as simple as Sam’s habit of wandering through her own sentences. She feels the wave of exhaustion that always washes over her after these visits to coventry begin to crest. And there’s supper to get through and the children to put to bed yet. Really she wishes they might have just kept on kissing their way upstairs and into Sam’s bed, where more kissing might have happened before she curled herself up in Sam’s arms for a long nap.

She feels a warm hand pressed gently to her back, between her shoulder blades, then smoothed comfortingly up to the nape of her neck.

“It’s that hard, is it?” Sam asks softly.

Susan shakes her head. “It's --” She pauses. The edge of new insight is right there but she can’t quite touch it. “I never know what to say. About Timothy.” _About my marriage. About my life. About any of it._

Sam’s hand doesn’t pull away. There’s a few moments of silence. Susan can hear Claire and Sam in the sitting room, Claire’s voice full of instruction for her younger brother. Sam has started to resist his sister’s co-option of his playtime for her own games and soon enough she’ll have to intervene and remind Claire that she can’t always have things _her_ way. Susan puts the knife down at the edge of the sink and turns under Sam’s touch, feeling Sam’s fingers trail around the base of her throat and come to rest against the front of her chest just above the swell of her breast. She brings her own hands up to settle on Sams hips before she’s even consciously thought about doing so: they are so close, the movement seems natural.

“I never knew what to say, either,” Sam says, studying Susan’s face as she smooths her hand over the front of Susan's sweater. “I remember asking Paul -- Mr Milner -- what one was supposed to say when -- he had a wife, you see, before. Jane. I only met her once, maybe twice before she left Hastings to go live with her family. They’d married before he enlisted and when he came back they didn’t seem to ... fit, anymore.” She raises and lowers a shoulder in a nearly imperceptible shrug. “At least, that's how he explained it to me when I asked him.”

“But there are limits to what one can say to one’s parents,” Sam is watching her own fingers fiddle with the placket on Susan's sweater as she says this. “I knew that I wanted to divorce Adams for the better part of a year before -- before I told my father. He’s seen it happen before, of course -- a vicar sees everything, you see, much like a policeman. Nothing much surprises him. But I don’t think -- I don’t think he ever expected it to be _me_.”

Susan lifts a hand from Sam’s hip to press it against Sam’s hand on her chest -- both to stop the restless motion of Sam’s fingers and also because touching Sam’s hand was a point of contact more intimate: skin to skin. They’re close enough that Susan could tip forward from where she’s leaning back against the edge of the countertop and kiss Sam on the lips. She wants to; she knows it’s a bad idea. She can still hear the children arguing across the hall. She closes her eyes against the impulse, focusing instead on the feeling of Sam’s hand under her palm. Slight, with long fingers. The back of her knuckles chapped from the winter cold.

“Whereas, I think, my mother always did. Expect it to be me.” Susan opens her eyes. It’s wearying to admit, that her mother expected her to be a disappointment. “I’m too like her, you see. She knows all the signs. And she resents that where she -- where she compromised, I’ve decided not to. It was three days of needling me, trying to get some sort of admission out of me.”

“What ... what sort of admission?” Sam’s eyes drop to Susan’s lips, then back up to her eyes as she leans ever so gently in. She hasn’t tried to pull her hand away from where Susan is now holding it to her chest, and Susan’s other hand slides with a comfortable familiarity a little further around Sam’s waist toward the small of her back. Sam seems to have moved her own free hand from the sagging pocket of her own cardigan to the pocket of Susan’s, tugging ever so slightly as if to keep herself tethered there.

“Not this,” Susan says, perhaps a little too hurriedly. She’s nervous, suddenly, that -- despite the flowers, despite the kisses, despite all the signs -- Sam might be having second thoughts. “I mean, there were school-girl crushes -- _passions_ , she used to call them -- that she did her best to discourage. And she never thought much of Millie. But -- it’s more grubby and mundane than that. She thinks Timothy has run off with his secretary, possibly because I haven’t been a dutiful wife. Like _she_ was a dutiful wife.” She shakes her head.

“Has he?” Sam asks, and then then immediately shakes her head. “Never mind me, I'm dreadfully nosey. You don’t have to --”

Susan smiles at her, feeling a mixture of sadness at the answer and fondness for the asker. “I think you’ve a right to know, if we're --” she trips over the lack of a proper verb. “-- but I quite honestly don’t know. It’s the fact I don’t care one way or another that makes me realize it was the right decision to stay here, with the children, instead of going abroad. In a way, I wish he _would_ fuck his secretary. It would give us a reason to go our separate ways.”

There’s a thump and a shriek of outrage from the sitting room, followed closely by the sound of angry toddler tears. “I should--” Susan begins, releasing Sam’s hand reluctantly as Sam steps back.

“Go,” Sam says, with a smile. She leans in for a quick, warmly proprietary kiss at the corner of Susan’s mouth. “Go sort them out before there’s bloodshed. I'll finish the soup.”

* * *

It’s nearly nine o’clock when Susan finally has the children tucked into bed and is certain they’ll stay there. Little Sam had dropped off in her arms while she was reading Claire’s bedtime story and Claire had followed -- with only mild protest -- half a chapter of _The Woodbegoods_ later. Susan tucks them both in and slips out of the bedroom, leaving the door ajar so that Claire can make her own way to the toilet if she wakes in the night.

She hesitates at the top of the stair. Down below, she can hear the soft noises of habitation coming from the kitchen: water from the tap, the burble of the radio, the _chink_ of dishes being put away. Over the months since Sam’s arrival, it has become a ritual following the children’s bedtime for Sam and Susan to meet in the kitchen for a last cup of tea and a chat. Without formal agreement -- much in the same way Sam had come to share their meals and take her turn at doing the shopping -- Sam has fallen into the habit of washing up after supper so that Susan can get the children settled for the night. Susan has lost track of the number of evenings she has imagined: _This. This will be the night..._ that she kisses Sam. That Sam kisses her. That something will be said, by one of them, to acknowledge the growing connection between them.

Now they’ve acknowledged that something and Susan hasn’t the least notion of what might come next. What Sam might want. What she might fear. She grips the newel post, admonishing herself for her own foolishness. They had certainly managed well enough this afternoon. It hadn’t been awkward, none of it had been awkward. Only right. But now with the children put to bed, the night seems full of an almost overwhelming sense of possibility.

Sam looks over her shoulder and smiles when Susan steps into the kitchen. “I’ve just put the kettle on.”

“Thank you,” Susan says. “And thank you for washing up.” She wants to cross the kitchen and give Sam a kiss simply because now she _can_. She remembers, with sudden clarity, an evening spent at Jean and Hilda’s, shortly after Claire was born. She’d been returning to the sitting room after changing the baby’s nappy when she passed by the kitchen door and seen Hilda lean in to press a kiss to Jean’s temple as Jean stood at the counter, hands busy with something for their supper. That gesture of intimacy had made her want to weep, then, exhausted as she was from the baby. From the isolation of being with Claire all day while Timothy worked long hours, and found excuses to stay out even later. It had felt, at the time, that Susan had given up, perhaps forever, the right to seek out that kind of companionship and care.

Perhaps, with Sam, she’s being offered a chance to try again.

She doesn’t know how to say it in words, what she’s feeling tonight, so she goes over to the cupboards and makes work of pulling out the teacups and saucers, fussing with the sugarbowl, finding a plate for the remains of the biscuits, all of which she puts on the table next to the vase of daffodils at the center of the kitchen table. She had moved them earlier in the evening to make way for the supper dishes, and to keep them well out of the way of restless children. Sam has moved them back, and they strike Susan as something of a question posed to which Susan needs to find some sort of response.

The kettle boils and Sam fills the teapot that Susan had loathed until recently because it had been a wedding present from Great-Aunt Madge. Since October it had acquired happier associations as she and Sam sat at the kitchen table night after night with the china pot with the hand-painted lilacs between them.

As Sam moves to put the post on the table Susan has a sudden inspiration and turns to the counter by the pantry in search of a the squat yellow tin of lanolin that Lucy had passed along to her when she'd been nursing Sammie.

“Here,” she says, sliding into the seat kitty corner to Sam. “Give me your poor hands.” Washing the supper dishes hasn't helped matters and Sam's knuckles look painfully raw. “Have you not been wearing the gloves I bought you?” Soft leather gloves, perfect for driving, Susan had shivered watching Sam pull them on Christmas morning.

Sam looks chagrined. “There was a missing croquet mallet, you see, and Mr Foyle and I thought it might be in the stream behind the vicarage--”

Susan shakes her head, prying open the tin and scooping out a generous two fingers-full. “Give me your hands.”

Sam’s hands are slim, compared to Susan’s own, her almond-shaped nails carelessly trimmed. She has a pale groove where her wedding ring had sat until recently; Susan still wears hers but has the sudden urge to slip it off and lose it down the drain. If it hadn’t once been Timothy’s grandmother’s and therefore in some sense Claire’s...

She shakes her head at her own train of thought and spreads the salve over the back of first Sam’s left hand, then her right, then returns to the left with both hands to work it into the dry and angry skin.

It’s entirely innocent, the touch, and also at the same time...not.

Her hands warm the lanolin, smelling of chamomile and lavender, and she enjoys the way she can slide her hands over the back of Sam’s hands, down to her wrist, up across her palm to the tips of her fingers. She presses her thumb into center of Sam’s palm as if working out tension. A little sound, almost but not quite a sigh, escapes Sam’s lips and Susan looks up from her work, not breaking the rhythm: up, down, press and pull. Sam is watching Susan’s hands, her cheeks flushed pink and her eyes clear and dark. She looks up when she realizes that Susan is looking at her, and Susan feels a release of tension she hadn’t even known she was holding. They understand one another. Sam understands what Susan is asking with her hands: _May we…? Can I ... ?_ and she is answering: _Yes_.

Susan moves to Sam’s other hand

“The tea will get cold,” Sam murmurs, though she makes no move to free herself from Susan’s hands.

Susan makes a soft sound of agreement, for the tea is most definitely over-brewed by now, and moving toward tepid. But she doesn’t particularly care. Tea can wait. She’s spent too many hours, days, weeks, _not_ touching Sam and at the moment she cannot imagine ever tiring of doing so. As she works the lanolin into Sam’s skin, Sam reaches out with the hand Susan has released and brushes a curl of Susan’s hair back behind her ear. She continues the motion with a light tracery of fingers down Susan’s throat to the place where the top button but one holds the front of Susan’s blouse together. Her hand is warm and soft from Susan’s ministrations.

“I’ve -- I’ve thought about touching you, just here,” Sam whispers, the tip of her finger at the base of Susan’s throat.

Susan swallows. “I’ve thought about you touching me there, too,” she says, feeling herself flush. She almost can’t believe how easy it is, this exchange of touch. It makes her acutely aware of how much continual _effort_ Timothy had been.

This -- this requires no effort at all.

“And here,” Sam says, sliding her palm down over Susan’s breast. They’re turned into one another at the corner of the table, knees and ankles tangled together. Susan kicks off a slipper and slides the bridge of her foot up the back of Sam’s calf.

“Oh yes?” She’s smiling now, and Sam’s smiling back.

“Oh yes,” Sam agrees, leaning in for a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thank you for your patience. Chapter three will go up on or before June 15th.


	3. sam

Sam can’t remember the last time she was so aware of her own body in relation to another. Months, years -- perhaps forever. It’s exhilarating, like peeling an orange in the midst of winter: texture, taste, fragrance, sweet and magical. She’s shaking. Susan has her hand, still, in a gentle but insistent two-handed grip, pulling Sam forward across the corner of the kitchen table. Sam wedges a leg between Susan’s knees and Susan responds by locking her ankles around the back of Sam’s calf and holding Sam there, between her thighs. It’s all awkward angles, and there are too many layers of clothes over skin, but Sam doesn’t care and it appears Susan doesn’t either because here they are kissing and kissing and kissing.

Sam hears herself whine in frustration.

Has she ever made such a … such a _wanton_ noise before? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t care. She’s been waiting for this since before dinner, since Susan and the children came home, since she woke up this morning, since Susan kissed her goodbye, since Susan first touched her hair, laughed at something Sam had said, bent over a sheet of calculations in fierce concentration, waited for Sam to give her assessment of a situation in a way that made clear Susan thought Sam’s assessment mattered.

She feels Susan’s gentle laugh under her hand and against her lips, feels Susan’s mouth upturned in a smile.

“Please,” she whispers, against Susan’s tongue. Not even sure what she’s asking for.

“Shall we abandon the tea for tonight, then?” Susan asks.

Sam pulls back so she can look at Susan’s face. Susan’s eyes are bright and cheeks mottled. _I’ve done that. Me._ Sam puts her fingers to Susan’s lips before she thinks consciously she wants to do it. Susan’s mouth is so soft, so inviting. Susan parts her lips and sucks lightly at the tips of Sam’s fingers.

Sam shivers. “Please,” she says again.

Susan’s fingernails are digging, almost painfully, into the flesh of Sam’s hand. Sam wonders if she’s nervous too. Gently -- trying to make it clear she isn’t withdrawing due to second thoughts -- Sam pulls her hand from Susan’s grip and stands, holding out both her hands, palm up, to help Susan to her feet. The gesture makes Sam feel strangely vulnerable, as if Susan might rebuff her. But Susan smiles up at Sam -- flushed cheeks and bright eyes making it clear the answer to Sam’s _please_ is _yes_ \-- and puts her hands in Sam’s.

“Shall we...upstairs, then?” Susan asks, once on her feet, even as she pushes her fingers into Sam’s hair, making a mess of the knot at the base of Sam’s neck. A hairpin falls, skittering across the linoleum of the kitchen floor. “Where I can undress you properly?”

“I don’t think there’s anything very _proper_ about this,” Sam protests, although she’s smiling as she says it, they’re both smiling -- grinning at one another like they’re sharing the best secret in the world. Perhaps they are. Sam has the giddy feeling that she’s about to enter a secret world. One that she has stood wistfully outside of, in the past, with the tightness of loneliness and exile in her chest. She thinks of the way Paul and Mr Foyle move together through the world, a togetherness that has always filled her with a fierce, protective ache. On Friday, sitting at Paul’s kitchen table, she had realized -- with a sudden shock of self-awareness -- that it isn’t simply that she loves them both as friends and colleagues. It’s that she has seen in their life something she _yearns_ for. Something she’s wanted since before she had language to describe it to herself, to imagine it might be possible.

With Susan, it feels possible.

Sam and Susan make their way, hands tangled together and shoulders touching like they’re each afraid the other might drift away if they don’t stay anchored together on the journey to bed. At the top of the stairs Sam hesitates, unsure of which way to turn. Susan pauses too, looking down the hall toward the children’s room and the door to the master bedroom, then turns to Sam and tips her head in the opposite direction. “Your bedroom?” she asks, in a low voice. “It’s further away from the children.” _And further away from Timothy’s ghost_ , Sam thinks. She wonders how this moment would feel if this were a house she had ever lived in as Mrs Wainwright.

They step over the threshold into Sam’s bedroom. Sam presses the switch to turn on the overhead light, then immediately has the urge to turn it off again. The electric bulb is too harsh, and the room feels small and shabby even though it has become a sanctuary these past months. It’s not that Susan has never been here before -- it’s her own home, for goodness’ sake -- but every other time Susan has been into Sam’s space they’ve been on familiar footing. A lodger and her landlady, at first, then settling into the sort of female camaraderie that reminded Sam happily of her years in the MTC. This was something altogether different.

“I feel ... I feel as if I should be offering you a drink,” Sam says, attempting to turn her nervousness into a joke.

Susan shakes her head and squeezes Susan’s hand, leaning into her shoulder. “You’ve already made me tea,” she says, her voice warm and low. “And then you distracted me, most thoroughly, from drinking it.”

“Did I?” Sam has never thought of herself as particularly distracting. Adam been ... fond of her, in a baffled sort of way. Appreciative. The boys and men she’d stepped out with during the war -- including Andrew -- had been pals. They’d been _friends_. She and they had had fun together. She tries to remember if any of them had ever described her as _distracting_. If they had, it certainly had nothing like the effect that Susan’s words do now: Her skin tingles with the heat of reassurance and delicious possibility.

“Mmm,” is all Susan offers in response. She takes a step backward to close the door behind them, then tugs at Sam’s hand to pull her around so they’re face-to-face. Sam lets herself be pulled, her weight and momentum pushing Susan up against the now-closed bedroom door with a soft, hollow _thump_. She enjoys the proprietary way Susan handles her. It has sometimes bothered her, in the past, to be handled. Especially by men. It doesn’t bother her at all tonight. She settles her own hands at Susan’s waist as Susan leans back against the door with a grateful sigh. and let’s Susan pull her into yet another kiss.

The two of them have shared enough kisses now that the overwhelming novelty of Susan’s mouth has receded and Sam finds herself thing of all of the other ways that kissing Susan is new and exciting. Susan’s breasts pushed against her own, still clothed and maddeningly out of reach. Susan’s hair soft and curling brown to her shoulders. The warmth of Susan’s palm against Sam’s cheek, the hungry and satisfied noises Susan makes deep in her throat as they explore one another with lips and fingers.

Sam decides she likes the sure way Susan drags her hands down Sam’s body, as if shaping her, moulding her even closer as Sam pushes Susan gently up against the back of the bedroom door. She likes the way Susan is pushy with her hips, the softness of her belly pressed up against Sam’s in a way that feels only inviting. She’s not feeling any of the cold, clammy anxiety that had accompanied sex with Adam in the last few months of their marriage. It’s an amazing freedom, to know that whatever she and Susan do tonight, Sam can’t get pregnant from any of it. Sam has never known sex without the fear of how, and when, a girl might acceptably ask if the man she’s with is prepared to take the necessary precautions. That sex _could_ happen without the worry of making a baby feels like a revelation.

Everything tonight feels like a revelation: The fluttering, insistent feeling of Susan’s lips and teeth at her neck, the way Sam’s fingers tremble as she fumbles at the buttons of Susan’s sweater, then her blouse, pulling the shirttails out of Susan's waistband.  She pushes cloth aside, and down, until Susan wriggles her shoulders and pulls free of the cloth, bringing deliciously bare arms up to wrap in a loose embrace around Sam’s shoulders. Sam enjoys that it’s now Susan’s turn to moan _Please_ in a hungry voice that Sam understands because she feels the same.

“Is this...?” Sam gasps, between kisses, not entirely sure what she thinks needs asking: _Is this what you want? Is this what you need? Is this how it’s done? Is this how it should feel?_

“Yes,” Susan says, burying her face in Sam’s collar. And Sam thinks she means it, means all of it. _Yes_

Susan pushes away from the door and gently walks Sam backward to the edge of the bed; Sam feels the backs of her knees make contact with the edge of the mattress and -- because it seems to be what Susan wants -- allows herself sink backwards against the quilts as Susan crawls after and over her. She looks down at Sam with bright eyes, her hair tumbling soft around her face, her mouth red and slightly swollen from their kisses.

“I thought,” Susan says, breathless, “I thought about this every night I was away.”

Sam feels the knot of _want_ in her groin tighten at the thought -- the thought of Susan, lying alone in her childhood bedroom in Coventry, thinking of this. Of them, together. Of straddling Sam and reaching down with nimble fingers to undo the buttons of Sam’s shirt. “You were only away two nights,” Sam protests, though with no real interest contradicting Susan’s version of events.

“It felt longer.” Susan reaches the final button,  pushing the front of Sam’s shirt aside, then tugs Sam’s worn cotton of the camisole up over her brassiere. “Here, sit back up,” Susan leans back on her heels and reaches out with both hands to pull Sam into a sitting position beneath her. Without consciously deciding to do so, Sam slides her arms around Susan’s waist and smooths her hands up Susan’s back, feeling the line of her spine beneath the satin slip, halfheartedly fumbling for the clasp of Susan’s brassiere in turn, even as she arches up into another kiss. She’s never had a lover sit in her lap quite like this before and she’s startled by the intimacy of it, the way she’s aware of Susan’s thighs spread open above her lap, the teasing heat of Susan’s … well, Susan’s … _that part_ of her; Sam shies away even though she knows the words. Susan, spread open such that Sam would only have to reach down and -- she shivers at the thought, the wild thought that she might touch Susan there, as she would touch herself. 

Susan gently pushes Sam back far enough that she can reach between them for the edges of Sam’s sweater and blouse, and help Sam out of both. Then she reaches back down for the edge of Sam’s camisole and pulls it up over Sam’s head between kisses. Sam can feel her hair pins coming loose and before she can reach up to pull them out herself Susan is reaching up to let Sam’s hair down around her shoulders. The fall of the twist of hair she had pinned up in preparation for the Sunday service makes Sam shiver. She leans forward to press her face into the curve of Susan’s collarbone, seeking her warmth and the fading scent of that morning’s perfume.

She slides her palms experimentally up the slope of Susan’s thighs, feeling how they bracket her hips. How soft they are, beneath her hands -- but with muscle, too, strong enough to pin Sam in place against the quilts. It’s...comforting, that thought. It doesn't make her feel trapped, or want to flinch away. To find an excuse to get up from the bed. That these reactions would be more familiar feels suddenly shocking and wrong: How had she forgotten that _held_ doesn’t have to mean _trapped_?

She pushes her hands up under the cool, smooth satin of Susan’s slip, lifting it up over Susan’s head in a movement that consciously mimics Susan’s. She’s aware that of the two of them, Susan clearly has more experience with how one proceeds in these circumstances. Sam can remember as a girl, the hushed whispers among school friends about girls who _did things_. She had all but forgotten those giggling exchanges, the thrill she once felt at the hints -- from girls who didn't know much more than Sam, but who’d nevertheless seemed scandalously knowledgeable to the vicar’s daughter -- that girls _could_ do the sorts of things, together, that merited whispers and giggles.

She had forgotten (made herself forget?) the longing that this simple piece of information had elicited until something about the way Jean looked at Hilda, the way Millie slung her arm around Lucy, the way Susan looked at her from across the sitting room had brought those memories tumbling back into the forefront of her consciousness.  And the memories, in turn, helped make so many tiny shards of her broken-feeling life make _sense_.

Sam is sure this is what she wants, where she wants to be. But the strength of it leaves her disoriented.  She hopes -- fervently -- that Susan knows what to do next with all of this wanting and needing Sam is currently drowning in.

“Sweetheart?” Susan’s hand cups warm against the back of Sam’s neck. “Is this all right?”

Sam has had lovers ask variations of this question before.  Adam had asked, with a tedious politeness, nearly every time -- sometimes at multiple points along the way. She had always said yes. Yet for the first time, Sam feels that she’s actually being consulted. That Susan is not simply filling the silence in an obligatory way before proceeding with whatever came next in the script. There is no script for this. No beginning, middle, end. Or -- if there is -- it has all begun so long ago and carries the promise of spooling out far after whatever transpires tonight.

She could say, _No, not really._ She could say, _I don't know._ She could say, _Much, much better than I ever imagined I_ could _be_.

And Susan would listen.

“It’s…” Her throat closes up and she shakes her head against Susan’s shoulder. The tears come before she can stop them. “It’s just that for _years_ I’ve thought I was broken.”

Susan’s arms tighten around her shoulders. “You aren’t broken, love,” she says, pulling back far enough to look Sam in the eye. “There’s nothing broken about the way we are.”

Sam shakes her head again. “It’s never felt like this before.”

Susan laughs, softly, leaning back in and reaching around to unhook Sam’s brassiere. “You aren’t broken,” she repeats, lips brushing against the shell of Sam’s ear. “You just like girls.”

Sam lets Susan free her from her brassiere, and then her panties, wriggling out of them with her back against the cool fabric of the faded quilt that has traveled, with her, from bed to bed across the years. She remembers when it was new, stitched by her Aunt Agnes, the bright greens and yellows of the pattern a summer garden in her girlhood bedroom. The colors are worn now, but still comforting, and they make the bed -- and this room -- feel like a place she, Sam, belongs. With all of the histories she carries beneath her skin. Parts of herself she already knows she will someday to share with Susan.

She’s naked, now, and Susan is still in her slip and underthings. Susan stands at the side of the bed looking down at Sam with a gaze that makes Sam feel exposed and shy, though also emboldened by the knowledge that Susan desires her.

“You’re still wearing too many clothes,” she whispers, putting out a hand in a half-formed gesture meant to draw Susan closer, back onto the bed, where Sam can wrap herself back around Susan’s warmth and taste and touch her again and again.

“Shall I fix that?” Susan asks, smiling.

“Yes,” Sam says. “Please.”

Susan reaches down and pulls her slip up and over her head in a single, careless movement. Then bends to the work of unclipping her brassiere and garter belt, rolling down her stockings, stepping out of her panties. Sam has seen women naked before, of course. But it has always been the hurried nakedness of women dressing in the cold of a winter morning, everyone politely casting their eyes elsewhere. It’s exhilarating to know that Susan is undressing _for her_. For the purpose of being naked, together. Her breasts are small, but full, the areola a deeper hue than Sam’s own and generous around the nipples pulled tight against the sudden chill of exposure -- or, no, from desire. Sam feels her own nipples tingle in response and before she's consciously decided to do it she’s cupped her palms around her breasts, thumbing the nipples, thinking about what it will be like to touch Susan’s this way. Or, perhaps, put her lips to first one, then the other.

Susan’s belly shows the marks of two pregnancies and the angry red scar of the cesarean section that brought her second child into the world. Below that are thick brown curls a few shades darker than Sam’s own. Sam wants to slide her fingers through those curls and feel whether Susan is as full and wet as she knows herself to be. She’s aching in a hungry, pleasant way that makes her feel wide awake with anticipation. She thumbs her nipples again, watching the way Susan’s eyes track her movement, then reaches out a foot to hook her ankle around the back of Susan’s knee.

“You’re too far away,” she whispers. “Come show me what to do.”

Susan crawls onto the bed and stretches out alongside Sam. Sam shivers as the cold air moves over her skin, followed by the heat and press of Susan’s body against hers with no clothing left separating them from one another. Susan props her head up on one hand so she can look down at Sam’s face as she ghosts a hand across Sam’s belly and lays a palm just below her navel. Sam lets her knees fall open, inviting Susan to move lower.

Susan leans down to press a kiss at the corner of Sam’s mouth. “You’re so beautiful,” she whispers, trailing kisses across Sam’s cheek and down to the warm creases of her neck where she nuzzles in as she skims a hand across the tops of Sam’s thighs. Sam feels herself canting her hips up to meet the barely-there touch. She whimpers in frustration and Susan nips at her shoulder. “Good?”

“Good,” Sam manages. It’s soft and slow and agonizing and delicious. She rolls toward Susan in the quest for contact. One of her arms is trapped between them but she reaches out with the other hand to smooth her hand down the curve of Susan’s hip, the back of her thigh, pulling Susan’s leg closer. Susan smiles into a kiss, twisting her wrist so that as Sam pulls her forward Susan’s fingers slide down between Sam’s thighs, slick with arousal.

The intrusion is startling. Sam has certainly touched herself, there, and had a male partner or two who tried to make it good for her. But she’s discovering tonight how inadequate their fumbling attempts had been -- or, perhaps, doomed to failure if Susan is right and no man, however skillful or patient, could have kindled the response that Susan teases out now with a few strokes of her fingertips.

Susan _hmmms_ approval against Sam’s lips and in response Sam whimpers again -- a shamelessly needy sound -- and thrusts herself up against Susan’s hand. She feels a finger, maybe two, maybe three slip _inside_ and she arches up with a groan against Susan’s anchoring weight.

Susan dips her head and finds Sam’s nipples -- first right, then left -- with her lips and tongue and teeth as she moves her fingers in and out, circling round, somehow stretching Sam open and leaving her empty at the same time. Sam feels the rough scritch of Susan’s fur against the back of her own wrist as it is trapped between them. Susan is rocking against her and Sam lets out a startled gasp when Susan tips her knee back just enough that Sam’s fingers can slide -- a bit awkwardly -- between Susan’s thighs to graze the slippery heat of Susan’s folds.

Susan pulls back just far enough to whisper against Sam's skin: “All right?”

“More than,” Sam manages as Susan continues her clever fingering, a maddening rhythm that makes Sam feel as if her skin is too tight all over -- a restless, hungry urgency that in the past has rarely felt so full of, so full of -- Sam’s thoughts skitter away from her as Susan pushes deeper, her whole body rolling close against Sam as she lets out a low growl of _want_ and pleasure. Sam stiffens, momentarily, waiting for the feeling of claustrophobia that sometimes comes with the weight of another body pressing over her. But the need to pull away doesn't come. Instead, she turns to press her face against Susan’s hair and just like that the tightness deep inside pulls tighter, tighter still, and Sam thinks if Susan wasn't holding her down she’d be lifted right up off the bed --

\-- then the tension breaks, and she's tipping over into pure pleasure as the orgasm washes through her.

Susan is quiet and still, after, though Sam can tell she is not bored, disinterested, or asleep. For one thing, Susan still has ... three? Three, Sam thinks, fingers crooked up inside of Sam, her thumb pressed firm alongside Sam’s -- well, her clitoris, she thinks, a blush stealing across her cheeks already flushed with post-coital heat. Usually, at this point, Sam is ready not to be touched, a lover’s hands feeling rough and demanding and all-overish in a way that makes her skin crawl. But this doesn’t feel that way at all. Susan, she thinks -- the thought drifting through her mind as if it had always been there -- _belongs_ inside her. In a way no other lovers had. She lifts a heavy hand, the one not still caught warm and wet between Susan’s thighs, and pets Susan’s forearm down to her wrist, gripping tight and whimpering when Susan moves to withdraw.

Susan laughs softly, without hint of ridicule, and subsides back against Sam, tucking her chin against Sam's shoulder and letting Sam hold her hand firmly in place. “Ah, love,” she says. “I won't be able to stay. If the children wake --” but she couples this with a gentle thrust of her hips against Sam’s wrist, drawing Sam’s attention to the slick warmth there between her thighs, the way her body -- in contrast to Sam’s -- is still poised on the precipice.

Sam pushes her free hand experimentally up Susan’s arm, wrist to elbow, to shoulder, and rolls toward her with a small push of her hand against Susan’s collarbone. Susan allows herself to be moved, rolling back against the pillows with a sigh and letting her legs fall open in clear invitation.

Now it’s Sam’s turn to push up on one elbow so she can see. Susan’s skin is pale, her rose-colored nipples drawn tight at the peak of each breast. Sam cups her hand gently over one, then the other, feeling how well each breast fits in her hand. Feeling the pebble of each nipple against the soft skin of her palm. Susan's eyes are on her face, watching.

Sam draws her hand down Susan’s torso, over the bumps of her ribcage and the soft swell of her belly. Sam’s thumb dips into Susan’s belly button, then her fingers reach the rough curls below the stretch marks and the cesarean scar that had brought Sammie into the world and kept Susan alive, alive to be here now under Sam’s questing hand.

Sam pushes her fingers down through the curls and finds the slippery heat there, hidden, a secret just between the two of them.

“ _Yes_ ,” Susan breathes, flexing the muscles in her thighs to bring herself up to meet Sam’s touch.

Sam closes her eyes. Not out of shame or embarrassment but because she wants to concentrate only on this: the way Susan’s body opens to her touch, the many textures beneath her fingertips, the soft, slick sound of one finger, then two, pushing in and dragging out, the small grunting, satisfied sounds Susan makes when Sam gets her fingers in just the right place. Pushing in, dragging out, circling up along the hard, taut line of Susan's clitoris to the nub, and back down. In, out, up, and around ... it’s mesmerising, _Susan_ is mesmerising. Sam has to remind herself to breathe as she moves against Susan's nakedness, both of them warm and flushed and smelling of one another.

She feels Susan’s hand, shaking, skimming down between her shoulder blades, fingernails biting hard into the flesh of Sam’s behind as she lets out a deeper groan of satisfaction. Sam hears Susan’s other hand smack the headboard as she scrabbles for purchase and bears down against Sam’s hand buried three fingers deep inside.

Sam hadn’t realized that it would be possible to feel, just like with a man, the pulse of Susan’s orgasm through her own fingertips as Susan came. Sam’s own body throbs in response, tired yet still wanting. She buries her face against Susan’s neck and holds on, murmuring nothings against Susan’s damp skin as the trembling, iron grip of Susan’s thighs and groin slowly, slowly subsides.

She’s braced for the awkwardness and mess that, in her experience, inevitably came after. The washing up and the tidying of disarranged bedclothes and the pulling on of pyjamas, all with an air of slight embarrassment as if neither party quite wanted to admit that they had done something so untoward. But this time there is only Susan, with a softness and warmth that Sam can’t bear to imagine separating herself from. They are too entangled together, already, in ways that go beyond limbs and scent and the soft rise and fall as they breath together in the silence of the house that has somehow become her new home. She feels no inclination to move, and Susan doesn’t seem to either for after a minute or two of mutual silence she lets go of the headboard and reaches down to fumble with the sheets and quilts until both of them are more or less covered against the January night.

She doesn’t want to but -- “Claire and Sam?”

“Mm,” Susan murmurs against Sam’s hair. “I’ll hear if they call.”

Sam knows she ought to protest, ought to insist for Susan’s sake as well as her own. What would they say if Claire, finding her mother’s room empty, came knocking? But she can’t form the words in her mouth and decides to let Susan soothe her if that’s what she wants to do.

“Flapjacks,” she says, thinking of the morning sunshine streaming through the kitchen window and their little family gathered around the kitchen table, the smell of coffee and grease and honey from her uncle’s bees. “I’ll make them flapjacks tomorrow.”

Susan’s murmured assent is the last thing she hears as she drops off to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "[I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Wandered_Lonely_as_a_Cloud)" by William Wordsworth.
> 
> The book Sam is reads, _A Dinner For None_ by Maureen Sarsfield (1948) was recently republished as [Murder at Beechlands](https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress.com/2016/08/14/murder-at-beechlands-1948-by-maureen-sarsfield/) by Rue Morgue Press.


End file.
